Do you ever have those days when you wonder why you got out of bed? Monday was one of those days for me.

It all started while I was making breakfast. First, I burned my hand on my stovetop espresso maker. No big deal, I thought. At least it woke me up. Then, I burned my pancakes. I ate 'em anyway. They were still better than those frozen things.

When I got to work, later than usual and I'm not sure how that happened, things got worse.

While out on my route the other day, I stopped at a diner that featured liver and onions for the lunch special, something I hadn't seen in a lot of years.

Eating used to be so simple. A couple of eggs with grits, sausage, bacon or country ham in the morning with homemade biscuits. A quick hamburger or a bowl of chili at noon, and evening was your basic meat and potatoes.

After watching the snow arrive Friday night, our kids kept walking outside to measure the accumulation. And on Saturday morning, the first question the kids asked when they woke was, "How much is there?"

My husband simply pointed toward the window.

The kids cleared the driveway and had some fun outside for a while, but it wasn't long before they begged to go to Miller Park for the "big" hills.

When a group of 10-year-old little girls can get the best of me, I'm getting old.

This past weekend was my daughter's 10th birthday. That also means that it was her sixth sleepover.

For some unknown reason when Madison turned 5, I agreed to her suggestion that she should be able to invite that many girls. And when she turned 6, that's how many friends she invited. When she turned 8, thank goodness, we put a cap on the invitation list.

I drove there very carefully, stopping gently and not going very fast. The drivers behind me must have been frustrated.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a story about the number of fatalities and crashes in our county last year.

To go along with the story, I took a photo of a cross on the side of KY 55 marking the place where a local man lost his life, just one of the 1,000 crashes local law enforcement investigated last year.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."

—Robert F. Kennedy

A tiny ripple of hope ... Like most communities, ours has moments in its history of which its residents aren't proud.

A winter wonderland? Not quite, but Taylor County's first significant snowfall of the season dumped a nice 3 inches of powder on our laps.

Best of all, it gave me an excuse to stay home Saturday and Sunday. Any opportunity for slothfulness is never wasted on my part.

With little else to do, I found myself mired in news reports on the state budget. I must have experienced déjà vu at least a dozen times on Saturday alone. All of the fears and worries were the same as before.